Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

call, call.

Gibberish. His mind was gone.

“That one there,” the nurse said, pointing her clipboard at the moaning girl. “Her chart says she can fly, but I’ve never seen her so much as lift an inch out of that bed. As for the other one, she’s meant to be invisible. But she’s plain as day.”

“Were they tortured?” Emma asked.

“Obviously—they were tortured out of their minds!” said the clown. “Tortured until they forgot how to be peculiar!”

“You could torture me all day long,” said Millard. “I’d never forget how to be invisible.”

“Show them the scars,” said the clown to the nurse.

The nurse crossed to the motionless woman and pulled back her sheets. There were thin red scars across her stomach, along the side of her neck, and beneath her chin, each about the length of a cigarette.

“I’d hardly call this evidence of torture,” said Millard.

“Then what would you call it?” the nurse said angrily.

Ignoring her question, Millard said, “Are there more scars, or is this all she has?”

“Not by a long shot,” said the nurse, and she whisked the sheets off to expose the woman’s legs, pointing out scars on the back of the woman’s knee, her inner thigh, and the bottom of her foot.

Millard bent to examine the foot. “That’s odd placement, wouldn’t you say?”

“What are you getting at, Mill?” said Emma.

“Hush,” said Enoch. “Let him play Sherlock if he wants. I’m rather enjoying this.”

“Why don’t we cut him in ten places?” said the clown. “Then we’ll see if he thinks it’s torture!”

Millard crossed the room to the whispering man’s bed. “May I examine him?”

“I’m sure he won’t object,” said the nurse.